Business Intelligence - Infoworld

10 predictions for what the CIO role will look like in 2020

admin — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

At the same time, we also know that technology will change dramatically. Who could have predicted even 10 years ago that the CIO would have to deal with complications such as cloud security and virtualization? To find out how the role will change in eight years, we tapped industry leaders, analysts, and CIOs themselves to discover what the challenges of 2020 for the CIO will be like. Here's what we found out.

Microsoft's new data-sorting method sets record

admin — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:14:22 +0000

Besting a record set by Yahoo in 2009, the research arm of Microsoft have deployed a new technique for quickly sorting large amounts of data, called Flat Datacenter Storage (FDS).

The researchers will discuss their work at an Association for Computing Machinery conference dedicated to databases this week in Scottsdale, Arizona. They are also implanting their data-sorting techniques in Microsoft's Bing search engine, where it could boost response times to user queries.

5 things CIOs should know about big data

admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

No. 1: You will need to think about big data
Big data analysis got its start from the large Web service providers such as Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, which all needed to make the most of their user-generated data. But enterprises will big data analysis to stay competitive and relevant.

Yahoo's Genome joins hosted big data analytics trend

admin — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:06:56 +0000

Yahoo has joined a growing list of companies offering big data analytics as a service with its Genome offering this week.

Genome is a service designed to let companies deliver highly targeted online advertising and marketing campaigns. It will let advertisers quickly sift through and analyze terabytes of real-time Web data collected from Yahoo's own networks and from those of partners such as Yahoo and AOL.

Big data in the cloud: It's time to experiment

David Linthicum — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The lure of big data has many people in enterprise IT moving quickly to consolidate and mash up their data assets with other relevant information. The tools are here right now, including big data engines based on Hadoop, public clouds that provide rental access to a huge number of servers, and external cloud-delivered data resources to make better sense of your info.

Enterprise BI models undergo radical transformation

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 22:36:38 +0000

About two years ago, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield implemented a self-service business intelligence platform to aggregate and analyze vast amounts of data from multiple repositories scattered throughout the company.

The technology, from Palo Alto, Calif.-based QlikTech, was brought in as a supplement to a project management product from CA Technologies. So far, it has saved CareFirst $10 million in project costs and helped the health insurer reduce the number of outside contractors it uses by 25 percent.

SAP betting big on its HANA in-memory database

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:12:56 +0000

SAP seems to be betting its future on its HANA in-memory database, spotlighting the technology once again at the Sapphire conference in Orlando Wednesday, announcing a slew of new applications, partnerships and functional enhancements for the system.

3 winners, 3 losers in the move to big data

David Linthicum — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The move to big data is afoot. Recently, Yahoo and Google both tossed their very big hats into the ring, and the cloud computing leaders are already offering access to big data services. It's becoming the killer application for cloud computing, and I believe it will drive a tremendous amount of growth in 2012 and 2013.

However, with any shift in technology, there are those who win and those who lose. Here are three of each for your consideration.

Yahoo launches big data analytics tool for online advertisers

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:50:57 +0000

Yahoo today launched a new tool for online advertisers designed to take advantage of the company's extensive experience with big data analytics.

How to avoid big data spending pitfalls

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Big data is a powerful lure, promising to turn the massive and ever-increasing volumes of data inside an organization into a pool of intelligence that promises deep, actionable insight into every aspect of a business. However, that lure can lead you into an expensive trap if you don't plan carefully.

What does 'big data' really mean?

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:35:55 +0000

Big data is an IT buzzword nowadays, but what does it really mean? When does data become big?

At a recent Big Data and High Performance Computing Summit in Boston hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), data scientist John Rauser mentioned a simple definition: Any amount of data that's too big to be handled by one computer.

Beyond 'Jeopardy': How IBM will make billions from Watson

Bill Snyder — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Like millions of others, I made a point of staying home a few nights in February 2011 to watch a computer challenge the world's best "Jeopardy" players. IBM's Watson won, of course. End of story? Just a stunt? Not at all. After about five years of development and millions in R&D spending, IBM is taking its first steps to bring Watson out of the lab (and TV studio) and make money from it.

Google simplifies use of Analytics API

admin — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:38:29 +0000

Google has developed a tool to automate the creation of custom-reporting dashboards for its Analytics website-usage tracking service, the company said on Wednesday.

The new Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library lets developers create these dashboards without the need for them to learn the ins and outs of the Analytics API and manually write the code.

Next-generation IT has big shoes to fill

Bob Lewis — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

What do 3D printers, the difference between process and practice, and the increased demand for luxury goods have to do with a 7-foot, 8-inch-tall basketball fan with size 25 feet?

MapReduce

Doug Dineley — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:45:00 +0000

If you had to point to one event that marked the arrival of the "big data" era, it would be the December 2004 publication of Google's paper on the MapReduce programming model. Google came up with a clever way to scale its processing of crawled Web pages and Web server log files across large clusters of commodity servers, and it shared the ideas with the world.

Report: Explosive growth ahead for Hadoop, MapReduce-related revenues

admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:29:42 +0000

The market for software related to the Hadoop and MapReduce programming frameworks for large-scale data analysis will jump from $77 million in 2011 to $812.8 million in 2016, a compound annual growth rate of 60.2 percent, according to a new report released Monday by analyst firm IDC.

Tibco adds Hadoop support to Spotfire in-memory analytics

admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:44:08 +0000

Tibco has brought its Spotfire in-memory analytics software into the burgeoning ecosystem around Hadoop, an open-source framework for processing large sets of information, the company announced on Monday.

Surging demand for big data tools attracts investors

admin — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:22:01 +0000

Surging enterprise demand for tools that can manipulate and analyze massive volumes of structured and unstructured data has caught investor attention in a big way.

Top venture and growth capital firms in recent months have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into companies selling the so-called "big data" technologies. Venture capital firm Accel Partners has even established a $100 million fund to finance the early stages and growth of big data companies.

Google makes BigQuery available for big data needs

admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:19:41 +0000

BigQuery, a cloud-based service from Google for analyzing very large sets of data, is now publicly available after a period of limited-availability testing, Google said on Tuesday.

IBM melds crime-fighting, big data analytics in one security package

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:26:58 +0000

IBM today came out with its first iteration of the analytics software package that it expects will help law enforcement, government agencies, and private businesses wade through the massive amounts of data they collect to help them predict, disrupt, and prevent criminal, terrorist and